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Telepathy
The Hives are utterly dependent on their Telepath's of all types to maintain a safe environment. Telepathy Since the Hives are vulnerable to sabotage and other crime, telepaths have a vital function to identify and catch criminals before they can disturb the peace of the Hive, and the illusion of safety without which they could not function. Telepathy is partly hereditary. However, the vast majority of telepaths are only borderline telepaths like Buzz, and the Hive does not know why and how a few of those develop further into true telepaths. It is believed that a true telepath blocks their abilities soon after birth because the thoughts of so many people are overwhelming. They usually are not discovered until Lottery, where their talent is awakened with special techniques. Once a Telepath is discovered in Lottery, staff for their special Telepath Unit will be imprinted to support them in their vital role of defending the Hive. Nosies The people of the Hive have an ambivalent, but overall suspicious attitude towards telepaths. They believe that there are thousands of them all over the Hive, since law enforcement personnel will dress up in special, deliberately scary costumes and masks and pretend to walk all around the Hive, reading random minds. This bluff has the beneficial effect of keeping would-be criminals in check, since they believe their intentions and guilt would be discovered by one of those Nosies. Even innocent, respectable people like Amber and her family, though, dislike the notion of having their minds read. Most will quickly leave the vicinity of a Nosy, and to prevent being read, they will loudly recite multiplication tables while they are near. On special occasions, to maintain and reinforce the myth, as well as to avoid mistakes, the role of Nosy will be played by borderline telepaths. Borderline Telephaths Every lottery finds nearly a thousand borderline telepaths. These get short "insights" into the main motivation of other people, at close range, especially when those others feel strong emotions life fear, anger or guilt. This makes them very valuable in psychological and forensic roles. They are assigned to Law Enforcement and Level 1. While there are different roles that utilize their special insights, the borderline telepaths do not go through the optimization phase of lottery, so are not necessarily assigned their perfect lifestyle as happens to the majority of candidates. Borderline candidates only rarely get insights into each others' minds, and never into the mind of a true telepath - the latter have much stronger mental defenses. True Telephaths True telepaths, who can reliably read the minds of the innocent and guilty, are vanishingly rare. Hive England, with one hundredd million inhabitants, only has five, ranging in age from their sixties (Morton) down to eighteen year old (Amber). Without York's suicide and Olivia's loss to fragmentation issues, they still would only be seven, too few for their vital role. It is possible that other hives which engaged in more wholesale duty child programmes in the past, like Hive Genex, have a higher percentage of true telepaths. After a telepath is discovered and their talent awakened, they are taken to Hive Futura, an empty former Hive, for training by their Senior Administrator (Megan in Amber's case). Gradually they are joined by the leaders of their various teams (Tactical department, Liaison, and Strike Team). (See Hive England/Telepath Units) After this initial phase of training, they return to the main Hive, where a Strike team will be formed and continue to train with the new telepath until they are ready to go operational. The talents of different telepaths are not the same - some can read more levels of the mind, right down to the subconscious, and Amber can read animals minds, something the other telepaths cannot do. Keith's ability sometimes fails for a time. Overtaxing one's talent leads to vicious headaches. Telepaths reside in special units that comprise well over a hundred staff, and are placed in the very top level of the Hive, Industry 1, to avoid overtaxing the telepath with too many nearby minds. It is essential that telepaths never meet face-to-face, but the reasons are not included in their staff's imprints. (Amber learns it in ''Hurricane'', and keeps the knowledge to herself.) A few months after they first go operational, usually around Halloween, the new telepath will be faced with the need to clean their mind from the echoes of strong target minds they have read. If the echo personalities gain ascendency over the telepath, a process known as fragmentation, '''complete mental breakdown and agony can follow, as happened to Olivia. Every telepath needs to find their own way to cleanse their mind, since it is an intensely personal process. Within the first year or so, telepaths are also prone to '''distancing, that is, rejecting the norms and morals of the Hive and become selfish and cold. In most cases, they recover after a few years. Mira speculates that Amber will not be affected by this problem, since unlike most other telepaths, she feels the emotions of her targets. The other telepaths can feel physical pain, but as far as is known, only Claire and sometimes Mira can sense emotions. References Category:Hive World